There may be two thousand and ten reasons to make personal writing part of your life. As we begin the year 2010, I offer four great reasons to write on a regular basis.
Reason #1 – Write To Heal Grief
Sheila Bender recently published A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. Her story tells how poetry helped her walk a painful journey before and after the decision to end life-support for her 25-year old son. No stranger to personal writing, Sheila Bender has authored a dozen how-to books on writing and selling the personal essay. The lessons in those books come home as she offers us a window into grief and private healing.
Reason #2 – Write To Record Your Life
I recently discovered my grandfather’s diaries in Mom’s cupboard. Since his death 25 years ago, the notebooks have been buried under some magazines and dusty old cookbooks. The yellowing pages, which cover the last 50 years of his life, now spread before me. They offer more than one man’s story. These crude notebooks contain pieces of history and pieces of me.
My grandfather completed eighth grade before going to work as a type-setter during World War I. His work required him to arrange cast metal letters to compose words, paragraphs, and entire books. I think of typesetting as a bit like laying Scrabble words out on the board. Once formed, the words are bound together and mounted in a press and inked. Finally an impression is made on paper. The work required scrupulous attention to detail and the words from others’ pens.
At home, my grandfather favored a worn upholstered chair with a large Webster’s Dictionary positioned on the table to his left. From this station, he maintained a life with words. He read the paper, worked the daily crossword, wrote to his family, read history books, and wrote his diary. Now that diary offers missing pieces of family history, remembrances of the world during his era, and glimpses of the man who spawned my love affair with language.
Reason # 3 – Write To Discover What You Believe
As you write, rapid firing thoughts and feelings come into focus. Sheila Bender says, “you find what is at the bottom of your heart.”
We do best when we “know our own mind.” Yet this is no easy assignment. Knowing your mind means sorting through the reams of thoughts and opinions heard across the dining room table or in the locker room. It means choosing a belief in spite of contradictions and hypocrisy of others. Knowing your mind means focusing your brain's complex, super-sonic fragment-thoughts to form a congruent idea. Then you must decide if your thought is worthy to become part of your opinion.
As I said, knowing your mind is no simple task. Each of our brains house about one-hundred billion neurons. These neurons, as if in some kind of uber dating game, may hook up with or connect with about forty thousand other neurons. All told, your brain has the capacity to make more connections than stars in the universe. How can we know our mind with this stratospheric number of possible conclusions to any inkling of thought? The task is more than staggering.
Fortunately, although it seems like a neuronal game of bumper cars, we carve out some familiar and repetitious territory. With the field narrowed, getting cozy with your mind becomes a bit less daunting. Over time we can sort the options to arrive at knowing (at least to some degree) who we are and for what we stand.
Writing helps. A moving pen will help focus rapid firing thoughts and feelings. In essence, the act of recording your thoughts helps dim the lights on the extraneous chatter of a free-floating mind. Writing things down turns the spotlight on important matters. The process helps rein-in the brain that otherwise can run pell-mell from here-to-there-to-everywhere. Even after a few minutes of reflective writing, things that seemed chaotic and overwhelming begin to make sense. Your overworked brain settles down. Clarity finds its way to the surface. Voila! This makes sense. This is what I believe.
If you have never had this experience, I urge you to try sorting things out with paper and pen. The writer, David Hare, put it this way: “The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.”
Reason #4 Write For Fun
What better reason to renew (or begin) your writing practice than to relax and play? As we enter the New Year, resolve to enjoy yourself. A short session with your journal can be mindful and soul-searching, but it can also be playful and creative. Often a session is productive and creative at the same time. My mission on The Write Path is to foster both growth and creativity.
Try letting your pen take charge by putting your critical mind on hold. Let one word lead to another and another – house may lead to mouse or louse or roust or joust– or all of the above. A walk down a yellow brick road may take you beyond the rainbow where you discover your prudish Uncle Charlie living in a cave, surrounded by voluptuous women. Why not?
The playful mind is a calm one. A relaxed mind opens the door to endless possibility. In the end, isn’t that what creative living is all about?
